Disney Dreamlight Valley Early Access: A Delightful Fun Time

I decided to buy the standard founders pack of Disney Dreamlight Valley for early access. Right from the start, I was pleasantly surprised because of the wide variety of options with character customization down to body type, skin tone, and hairstyles. I was delighted and touched that I was able to create a Filipino character like me. That representation matters and I'm so glad that the game represents that really well. 

Welcome to Dreamlight Valley! 

The game has a very relaxed vibe with you rebuilding the village and using magic of course to rid the valley of dark thorns that cause a dark magic spell of forgetting happen. That's another aspect of the game as well, helping many different characters retrieve their lost memories. You can visit the worlds of notable characters and ask them to come live in the Valley to help rebuild the village. You can plant crops, go fishing, go mining, cook, and craft in the game. You can hang out with the different characters one on one which boosts your friendship with them and you can assign them a role like gardening which helps boost your stats as well and can give you extra crops because of their magic. 

Hang out, make friends! 

This also leads to fetch quests for characters which smartly introduces crafting and how to do it. Sometimes, you'll need to make a specific item for the character like a decoration or a magical item. All the various materials can be found in the different biomes and can be created at your crafting table. There is also cooking in the game and sometimes they will ask for specific dishes which you can cook in your house as long as you have a stove. You can get recipes from your Disney friends or you can experiment and discover new recipes on your own. I like all of it, but the cooking is my favorite because it's fun trying out different things and seeing what dishes I can create. 

Time for some crafting!

There's also the fact that you can change your outfits and you can customize your character at any time with the inventory/user menu. So if you want to try a new hairstyle or try a whole new look, you can do that. You can also decorate your house and your valley with the furniture items. You can visit Scrooge Mcduck for different outfits and furniture. His inventory changes every day so be sure to check it out; that way you don't miss out on anything new. You can also do your own custom design with the clothes, ranging from shirts to dresses which is great and offers a lot of fantastic options. 

You can change your outfit and your look anytime.

Sometimes it can be challenging to find a character when you want to turn a fetch quest in which is why the map comes in handy. You can look at your map and mark the character icon on the map and it will create a sparkly magical trail that you can follow all the way to them. I love that they have this feature because it makes it a lot easier to find everyone.

Finding friends on the map is easy. 

You can take photos with characters, putter around, and just have fun doing what you want. The relaxed vibe of the game is really nice because you can take your time with it and there's no rush. There's a good mix of villains and heroes and it's amusing to be friends with all of them. Scar in particular had me laughing about how snide he can be, but most of the time he's just a big typical cat lounging everywhere. Even funnier is when taking photos with characters in the background, they will stop and pose with you which got me a rather cute and silly photo of Scar and Minnie Mouse. 

Scar is a Minnie Mouse fan! 

That being said there are some definite issues with the game. Remember, it is in early access so there are definitely going to be some things that are buggy and game issues that need work. First up is the constant game crashes. I've been playing this on the Nintendo Switch and I love it, but I have learned to save my game often because after a few hours the game suddenly crashes. This can be very frustrating if you're right in the middle of a quest and then you have to do it again because the game crashed at the worst possible moment. Second is sometimes quests break where something isn't loading the way it's supposed to or a character doesn't load in correctly. It can be a little disconcerting, but reloading the game does seem to fix it. Last is how some of the quests feel a little grindy like making a clocktower for someone and that is because so many materials were needed to craft it and I would have to wait until the next day to get some of them because the drop rate for them was not good. It felt tedious and overlong to the point that by the time I was finished, I was glad to be done with it. The good news is that Gameloft has been great communicating on their social media about the issues, what is getting fixed, and what they're working on. They have a discord as well which helps a lot. 

Ahh, night in the Valley is magical. 

Dreamlight Valley does go free to play next year and there really hasn't been a lot of microtransactions and there's a ton of content that isn't hidden behind a paywall which makes me really happy. There's a ton to do in the game and I've enjoyed all of it immensely because it touches on that cozy, relaxed vibe that I enjoy from my life/farm sim type games. Whether it's having a blast cooking meals with Remy from Ratatouille or having a good time gardening with Wall-e, Dreamlight Valley is an all around delightful fun time. 

I love my garden! 

*Disney Dreamlight Valley in early access is available to play on the following platforms: Steam, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S

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